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zkSync Era: A Powerful Start

At the end of March, Matter Labs opened access to its main product – zkSync Era – a Layer 2 protocol that scales the Ethereum network. How is the technology doing almost a month after launch?

The flagship product of Matter Labs is zkSync Era. Its creation took four years, and on March 24th, the public was finally given access to the product's alpha version.

What is it? zkSync Era is a Layer 2 protocol that scales Ethereum and adds support for zkEVM, a tool for "scaling Ethereum's smart contracts without compromising on security, decentralization, cost, or performance," and which at its core uses zero-knowledge proof technology.

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Zero-knowledge (ZK) proof is a cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove the truth of any statement to the other party, without providing any other information. The simplest example, in our opinion, would be the following: Alice wants proof that Bob knows the password to his Twitter account. How can Bob prove to Alice that he knows the password without giving the password? Bob just has to log in to his account and twitt something to Alice. Thus, Bob proves to Alice that he knows the password without naming it.

There have been a lot of interesting developments since the protocol debuted on March 24, reflecting the high level of enthusiasm for the project. The use of zkSync Era has been announced by: The Graph, LBank.com, Pyth Network, SpaceFi, zkEagles, rhino.fi, Ramp Network, Omnisea, Kreatorland, Redstone Finance, Nexon Finance, SYNTHR, Deri Protocol, Viva Leverage and Symbiosis.

Additionally, the security operations platform Defender from OpenZeppelin now incorporates zkSync Era.

The TVL (Total Value Locked) of zkSync Era exceeded $50 million on the fourth day following the launch. At the time of writing, according to L2Beat, its TVL exceeds $240 million.

The zkSync Era was already in third place among all Layer2 solutions on April 2nd, despite the fact that the product is still in its alpha version.

There were, of course, some issues as well. On April 1st, a problem with block production forced the zkSync Era network to go offline for a few of hours. However, it was quickly resolved.

The smart contract on the zkSync Era was broken on April 7th, according to Gemholic Ecosystem. Gemholic Ecosystem made a mistake when deploying their token contract because they used the .transfer() function, which didn't work on the zkSync Era. 921 ETH got stuck in the smart contract as a result. The developers announced right away that they would be able to return the funds.

And eventually, the issue was actually resolved. In the zkSync Era, both the .transfer() and .send() functions now operate properly.

The Twitter account of zkSync was breached on April 14th, but with two-factor authentication enabled, the hacker was prevented from accessing the account. (Tip: Make sure it's enabled for your accounts as well.)

Overall, zkSync Era is doing very well. Halborn Security even conducted an audit for Matter Labs and zkSync Era, the results of which are available online.

Additionally, Aave users voted to use zkSync Era to deploy Aave V3.

Related: Aave Protocol V3 is Finally Live on Ethereum!

The growing interest in zkSync Era demonstrates the potential of zero-knowledge proof as a technology. We'll continue to Observe.

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